Following her Oscar-winning role in Room that catapulted her to the big leagues, Brie Larson signed on for her marquee gig as Captain Marvel in the MCU. While she was a pivotal figure in the narratives of the franchise, her second standalone film The Marvels which was released in 2023, failed to impress at the box office.
But a look back at Larson’s filmography will show that the actor has faced even more criticism for one film that earned the dubious distinction of being the quintessential white savior movie. A discerning fan brutally pointed out the grave stereotypes propagated in this film that would make even the Oscar winner cringe today.
This Brie Larson Film Is a Forgettable Example Of The White Savior Trope
While Brie Larson is synonymous with her Marvel gig as Captain Marvel along with other projects, fans may not be aware that the star has done her share of cringeworthy roles. Larson was part of a film titled Basmati Blues in which she played the role of a scientist who comes to India to create and market genetically modified rice.
Set in a village in Kerala, India, the biggest problem of the film was its blatant stereotyping of Asian characters and situations. In addition, the Oscar winner’s protagonist being glorified as the quintessential white savior who is the only hope for a helpless population, did not go down well with audiences in the country.
The film also has other done-to-death cliches like the protagonist riding a horse to save the day, struggling to eat ‘monkey masala’, dancing to Bollywood tunes, befriending street animals, and falling in love with a local. Prominent cartoonist Manoj Vijayan aptly described the glorification in an interview with NPR.
It plays to stereotypes of an exotic but backward people just waiting for a white person to swoop in and save them.
An instagrammer of Indian origin named Nila Varman went to town as she ripped apart these aspects of the film and other serious ones that glaringly stood out. In her Instagram handle, she first pointed out the discrepancies in the demography which set the film in the southern state of Kerala, but shows it to be in Bilari, Uttar Pradesh, as per a signpost indicating this detail.
She also called out the makers’ indifference in realizing that every state in India speaks a different language, which was completely not taken into account when the dialects of Tamil, Malayalam, and Hindi formed a confusing melange.
Someone please tell me where this film is taking place. I feel like the filmmakers were like ‘Oh but all Indians speak the same language no one’s going to notice’. WELL, GUESS WHAT? I NOTICED!’
Varman also revealed that she literally gave up any hope of the film salvaging some respect after an Indian character was seen calling her own people savages. With Larson breaking into cringeworthy song and dance at the drop of a hat, the movie on the whole could be seen as a complete misstep on the part of the actor.
Matt Damon And The Debacle That Was The Great Wall
While Brie Larson’s Basmati Blues did little to change the narrative around cultural stereotypes, Matt Damon too faced a similar dilemma. Despite an impressive repertoire of films under his belt, there have been times when the Oscar nominee has made some wrong decisions that he has regretted.
One of these choices included his role in the American-Chinese production The Great Wall also co-starring Pedro Pascal. In the film, Pascal and Damon play two European mercenaries who are imprisoned by the Chinese Emperor in The Great Wall of China and join forces with the local army to protect the kingdom from destruction.
Though the film made almost $335 million at the box office, a lot of the themes in the story did not go down well with audiences and critics. Many viewers targeted the controversial white savior trope that the film encouraged, thereby unconsciously demeaning the importance of the Asian experience. Damon too concurred with the general opinion about the tone deafness of the film in WTF with Marc Maron.
I was like, ‘This is exactly how disasters happen, It doesn’t cohere. It doesn’t work as a movie’. That’s as s***ty as you can feel creatively, I think. I hope to never have that feeling again.
The Ocean’s Eleven star went on to add that while he regretted doing the film, his family at home including his daughters, also gave him flak for accepting the role.
Basmati Blues can be rented on Apple TV.
